arren on a barrel, "pumped" his arms, and by the time the
Cronin automobile had returned with the other detectives, Warren was
restored to understanding again. Shirley forced some liquor between his
teeth, to be greeted with a torrent of strange oaths.

"The jig is up, Warren," said the criminologist. "As a chess-player
in the little game, you are a wonder. But, I think I may at last call
'Checkmate.'"

"I'm not dead yet, Shirley," hissed Warren. "I gave you your chance to
keep out of this. But you wouldn't take it. I'll settle the score with
you before I'm finished. There's one man in the world who knows how to
get away from bars. I'm that man."

Then his teeth snapped together with a click. He said nothing more that
night, even during the operation for probing Shirley's bullet, and the
painful dressing. At the station-house, and his arraignment before the
magistrate at Night Court, where he saw some other familiar faces of
his fellow gangsters--now rounded up on the same charges--he still
maintained that feline silence.

And his eyes never left the face of Montague Shirley, as long as that
calm young man was in sight!

Shirley merely presented his charge of murder--for the strangling of
Shine Taylor. The names of the aged millionaires were not brought into
the matter--there was no need. He had done his work well.

At Cronin's agency, late that night, there came a cablegram from the
greatest detective bureau of France.

"The Montfleury case" was the most daring robbery and sale of state war
secrets ever perpetrated in Paris. It had been successful, despite the
capture, and conviction of the criminal, Laschlas Rozi, a Hungarian
adventurer who had killed three men to carry his point. The scoundrel
had escaped after murdering his prison guard, and wearing his clothes
out of the gaol. A reward of 100,000 francs had been offered for his
capture, by the Department of Justice.

"Monty, who gets all the credit for this little deal--that's what's
bothering me?" asked Captain Cronin, as they sipped a toast of rare old
port, in his rear office.

Shirley lit the ubiquitous cigarette, and tilted back in his chair.

"Captain: why ask foolish questions? This case ought to buy you five or
six of those big farms you've been planning about--and leave you fifty
thousand dollars with which to pay the damages for being a gentleman
farmer."

"And you, Monty? You know you never have to present a bill with me. What
will you do w